Category Archives: Art

Carducci’s ‘Il poeta’ : The Poet as Blacksmith

3 Replies

For those of you who attended my webinar “Forging and Arrow of Gold’ last year, I am happy to announce the publication of my article in the Journal of Critical Studies in Language and Literature along with my translation of Carducci’s poem ‘Il poeta’.

Below, you can download the article “Forging an Arrow of Gold: Translation and Analysis of Carducci’s ‘Il poeta’ from a Psychosynthesis Perspective”:

calombard-forging-and-arrow-of-goldDownload

To remind everyone, in Creating Harmony in Life, Assagioli invites us to:

“Reread Giosuè Carducci’s poem ‘Il poeta’ (‘The Poet’) as it expresses in a wonderful way … through which the psychic elements are fused and shaped in an inner fire, producing works of beauty.”

Inspired by Assagioli’s suggestion, I searched the internet for the poem and found it in Italian along with a translation by G. L. Bickersteth published in 1913.[1] While Bickersteth’s translation is true to the meter and rhyme of Carducci’s poem, the language itself felt antiquated – for example, his use of ‘merry-andrew’ in the third line. So, I decided to attempt to translate Carducci’s poem myself from a more literal perspective.

In the article above, I show how psychosynthesis provides an additional approach to literary criticism beyond what psychoanalytical criticism and Jungian literary criticism can offer. Then I briefly describe my translation process of Carducci’s poem “Il poeta”. Finally, as both reader and translator, I examine the archetype of the blacksmith in “Il poeta” and then analyze the poem from a psychosynthesis literary perspective.

Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907) was a poet, writer, literary critic and teacher. During his lifetime, Carducci was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy, and today he is studied by nearly all Italian students during high school. In 1906 he became the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature “not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces.”[2]

Giosuè Carducci

References

[1] Bickersteth, Geoffrey Langdale (1913). Carducci. London: Longmans, Green.

[2] “Vita, opere e poetica di Giosuè Carducci” (in Italian). 13 June 2014. Retrieved 5 January 2022.

Beauty as a Divine Imprint

2 Replies

John
As an expression of beauty, awe, and awakening, art has always played a great part along our journey to our Higher Self. Throughout the world, holy places have been built to hold the polar tensions of spirit and matter, inner and outer space and light, as well as the community that shares the transcendent experience within the architectural space.

Assagioli noted that:

“Matter is the highest form of Spirit and Spirit is the lowest form of Matter.”

In this way, spirit seeks matter to express the full beauty of the transcendent. Assagioli also noted that Plato, Plotinus, and Christian mystics have recognized and proclaimed that “beauty is the essential attribute of the Supreme.” Continue reading →

Synthesis—A Dynamic, Organic Unifier

Leave a reply
Lotus flower 3
Assagioli writes that the Lotus is a symbol of Synthesis.

Let’s take a closer look at the word ‘synthesis’. The word psychosynthesis was first used in 1889 by Pierre Janet in his book  L’automatisme psychologique. Freud spoke of the synthesizing function of the ego, but he used this word only in the sense of  re-establishing the condition existing before a split or dissociation due to a traumatic experience or to strong conflicts.

Others, such as Jung and Maeder used the words synthesis and psychosynthesis in a deeper and wider sense as the development of the integrated and harmonious personality, including both its conscious and unconscious parts. 

The word ‘synthesis’ comes from the Greek word syntithenai, in turn deriving from syn meaning “together” and thtehnai meaning “to put, place.”

Continue reading →